Thursday, May 18, 2006

"Elegance: The concept is not easy to explain - there is an ineffable quality to some technology, described by its creators as concinnitous, or technically sweet, or a nice hack - signs that it was made with great care by one who was not merely motivated but inspired. It is the difference between an engineer and a hacker." -- Ms Pao, The Diamond Age.

The official tagline for my company Aeste is "engineering elegance".. I've often asked myself what it meant.. The quote above sums it up perfectly.. It is what I'm trying to create.. A professional engineering company that strives to create elegant technology.. Any output from the company has to be inspired and not just run-of-the-mill..

That was what I was trying to explain to my aunt last weekend, on a bus to Oxford.. The mechanics of engineering can be easily taught and understood in school.. However, good engineering is something that cannot be taught.. It is something inbred..

I was most recently re-motivated (i've noticed that i require a lot of re-motivation recently.. i've started to become jaded with reality) on my visit to Berlin.. We got to visit several organisations.. One of which was an engineering company whose only output is intellectual property..

I've always contended that my dream is to turn Aeste into an intellectual property company.. This concept has been difficult to understand by many.. However, it is quite clear in my head.. And after visiting this German company, it has become solidified.. There is a market for such businesses and it is perfectly plausible to build one..

Aeste will be a company whose sole output is IP.. These IP will then be used by other organisations/companies in order to make money.. This means that the IP produced would have to be of extremely high quality and not your standard dumb IP produced in much of the tech world today..

While visiting a vehicle manufacturer in Berlin, I was startled to find that most of their engineering work was aesthetically driven.. As a hacker, and being brought up in a formal engineering environment, aesthetics had always been relegated to an after thought.. A skin is something you slap onto a solidly engineered body, not the other way around..

However, it has become clear that in order to produce successful products, user interface portion is extremely important.. Products should be aesthetically driven.. Engineering should be the art of squeezing as much as possible, into the constraint of the body.. This is true for both hardware and software work.. User interface is key..

So, I have come to understand the true meaning of "engineering elegance" as I originally intended it to be, 6 years after I had actually come up with the tagline.. It's some higher objective to aspire to than to just plain make money.. Hmm.. So, I guess that I've got something else to look forward to in the next few decades of my life..